"LET ME COLLECT DUST" (Part 1 of 2)

“LET ME COLLECT DUST”

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR1XxIvY54c

 

[P]

 

It had been months since I last saw him. He had grown a dark thatch of lockdown hair and a full beard, somewhere between hipster and hillbilly. His battered old black beret still balanced at a military angle.

      (My social worker said he was the only man she knew who could wear one and not make her think of Michael Crawford. I had no clue what she meant and had to look it up on YouTube, but remained not much wiser. There was some cruel footage of a mentally disabled bloke being shouted and laughed at. Couldn’t see the relevance. Though he did appear to be banging a fit MILF.)

      I was walking to the corner shop for half a pint of milk when he pulled up next to me in his grubby blue builders van. He slid the door open and called my name. It was his voice I recognised, from behind a grey fog of diesel exhaust and cheap cheroot.

      ‘Got something for you.’ He waved towards the van’s glove compartment, scattering ash over the passenger seat and down his double denim.

      I leaned into the reeking interior and flipped down the compartment’s door. A few empty chocolate wrappers fell out. At the front was an open box of his little black cigars. Behind it were two packages of similar size, wrapped in greasy brown paper. I pulled out the nearest one. It was heavier than expected and I caught a sharp whiff of metal and oil.

      ‘Not that one.’ He grabbed it from me and stuffed it into the inside pocket of his jacket, where it formed a threatening bulge. He shoved the other package into my suddenly sweaty grasp. It felt much lighter and squishy. I peeped inside. Small plastic bags with a handful of capsules in each.

      ‘I can’t afford this.’

      ‘Sell them at mates rates.’ He winked. ‘Keep the cash and call it pocket money.’

      I made to thank him, but he raised a hand to stop me, as if embarrassed. There were vivid scars across his palm, a complex web of lines, which made it look as if he’d tattooed his own future across his skin.

      He turned the gesture into mock salute, aligning his fingers with the brim of his beret. ‘Stay safe. Maintain your distance. That’s how I’ve survived.’ The red and gold of his NPG badge caught the light as he leant forward and slammed the van’s door shut. Then he was gone, in a further plume of emissions.

 

[P]

 

Once back in my room in the hostel, I locked my door and inspected the merchandise. Spread across my duvet, I reckoned there was well over a grand’s worth, even at discount.

      The capsules were grey-white with a red flash on one side and a dark blue letter P on the other. I hadn’t seen this kind before, but I guessed they were Panic. He always had the latest stuff.

      Amongst the sachets, I found a rough square of card, torn form one of his packs of panatelas. On the blank side, he had scrawled a semi-illiterate note in block capitals, with some of the letters reversed, so that it resembled Cyrillic. As good as a signature, to someone familiar with his hand.

      He wanted me to spread the word that he was contagious and self-isolating. Fair enough. Having deciphered and memorised his instructions, I ripped the note repeatedly, until it was confetti. Later, I would take the pieces along to the shared bathroom and flush them.

      For now, I had work to do. I pulled my bed away from the wall and prised open a section of the skirting board, to reveal a small cavity. My burner was concealed inside, stripped down to its components. Being cheap Alcatel shit, it didn’t take long to fit the chip and battery in place, then clip the flimsy plastic fascia together.

      Only one signal bar, but it had held its charge well. I fired off a simple one line text to all my contacts, then settled myself comfortably to await their replies.

 

[P]

 

It was a sunny May afternoon, but in the almost perpetual shade of the tenements it was already gloomy and cool, with a sharp breeze cutting round the concrete corners. Everyone was hunched in their Primark hoodies, as if it were autumn.

      My wares had drawn quite a crowd, though not much cash yet. There was some scepticism about their veracity. And also about my own, due to my accent and vocabulary, which included such terms as veracity in the first place.

      Some of the harder cases knew me from our shared experience of the care system. They were about to vouch for me when the unmistakeable wail of police sirens sounded from nearby.

      It was impossible to tell their direction, with all the flat echoes and re-echoes from the surrounding buildings. But they were definitely getting closer.

      My audience dispersed and disappeared into the various walkways, underpasses and stairwells, so that I was suddenly alone. Time to dump my remaining stash. I headed for the big metal bins round the back of the nearest block, beside the burnt out garages.

      I was so focused on my goal, I didn’t see or hear the vehicle’s approach until it screeched to a halt right next to me. He wound down the window of the blue van and yelled at me to get in. But the door was shut and I couldn’t shift it.

      ‘Put your mask on, you silly cunt.’ He pulled his own face covering up to conceal his mouth and nose. A complicated piece of kit that made him look like Bane from the Batman film.

      I fumbled with my own folded handkerchief and two hair bands and managed to loop it over my ears.

      ‘That will have to do.’ The door lock released and he wrenched the sliding panel open.

      I clambered into the seat just as he pushed the pedal down and we launched forward at speed. I gripped the door frame to stop from falling out. He wrenched the wheel to the right and we broke through the little metal fence round the childrens playground, trailing streamers of Do Not Enter tape.

      We bumped over the derelict stretch of mud and grass, squeezed between some bollards, then swerved onto one of the rat runs that wended round the estate. All the while, the sirens grew louder. Sidhe screams of doom.

      ‘Hold on,’ he mumbled through his mask. As if my knuckles weren’t already aching with the strain.

      We took a couple of turns, apparently at random, then hit a straight stretch of back road. One hand on the wheel and one eye on the windscreen, he leant across me. His warm body pressed against mine. His earthy smell of sweat and tobacco as cloying as geraniums, even through my makeshift mask.

      ‘Mind your fingers.’ He closed the door at last and eased off the accelerator. Straightened up in his seat and seemed to relax.

      The sirens were far behind us now. A helicopter hovered above one of the towerblocks, glittering in the late spring sunshine like a dragonfly about to alight on a tree stump.

 

We drove on in silence, heading east, with the sun setting to our rear and the mellow glow of evening on the shuttered facades of factories, warehouses and trade outlets. It was Dagenham’s shabby answer to a question nobody had asked about England’s equivalent to Detroit.

      The sky was darker than it should have been. An oily bloom of smoke rose in the distance and spread its stain south towards the Docks.

      He twiddled with some controls on the dashboard and switched on the radio in time for the news. The second headline was about a violent disturbance on an East End estate, following police action to break up an illegal assembly of youths. Shots had been fired and petrol bombs thrown.

      ‘Is that my fault?’

      He ignored my question. ‘I need to dump this van. I’ve only got away with using it while the ULEZ is suspended. It’s a toss up whether my time or luck will run out first.’

      He started to drive with more purpose and energy, craning his neck at every corner to scout the semi-industrial neighbourhood. At last, he turned off onto the forecourt of a car showroom and parked the van out of sight of the road, behind a cluster of similar vehicles.

      His first action was to light one of his foul cheroots, which he puffed in contemplation for a minute or two. Then he produced two Tesco carrier bags full of groceries from the van’s enigmatic depths and plonked one in my lap.

      ‘Cop this. If you’re stopped, you’ve just been shopping for your dear old granny.’

      We left the van unlocked. Either it wouldn’t be found for weeks, when the business re-opened, or it would get nicked. Either would be a good result. He left without another word, still puffing like a vintage steam train.

 

We must have driven in circles, as I soon realised I wasn’t far from the hostel. The greying sky was tinged with the yellow and green shades of an old bruise. The air carried the distant smell of barbecue.

      A few people were about, their movements sluggish and furtive. Although they kept apart, it seemed to me they were deliberately acting as if they didn’t know each other. They looked dishevelled. Dark smuts on their clothes and skin.

      I maintained my own distance and adjusted my mask so as to not chance being recognised.

      They reminded me of that poster from a few years ago: a slow-motion but inexorable horde of refugees sweeping the continent like a zombie apocalypse. Were they daubed in soot or blood? Or both?

 

[P]

 

Rule number one (block capitals, bold, red ink, double underline, exclamation mark) in the Dealer’s Handbook is DON’T SAMPLE THE MERCHANDISE! But I felt I deserved it.

      I popped a Panic from my remaining stash and washed it down with some tepid, fizzless mineral water I found in my decoy carrier bag. God knows how old it was. Everything was months past its sell-by date.

      Buried at the bottom of the bag was a familiar brown paper package, at least twice the size of the original I’d been given. I managed to hide it behind the skirting before the drug’s effects fully hit.

      It was a heart attack with its own dance track. Like when you go to a club and the music is so loud you can’t hear it. Just the bass throbbing in your chest out of step with your pulse. I felt as if I were running at one hundred and twenty miles per hour. The friction from the molecules of air abraded my skin at the slightest movement. There were hidden messages in the fabric of my duvet as my fingers traced its Braille embroidered surface.

 

Later (though I had little sense of the intervening time), I found one of his back-of-a-fag-packet notes pushed under my door. At first, the childish squiggle failed to resolve into words. I finished the bottle of flat, tasteless water while I waited for English to become my first language again.

      Eventually, I divined that he needed somewhere to stay and would be back this afternoon after collecting some of his belongings.

      There were a few missed calls from him on my mobile, but nothing new from my other contacts. It seemed I would have to find some more customers from my wider circle.

 

[P]